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Advocacy

In response to the release of The Long Road Home, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services has announced the beginning of a citywide campaign called One Year to Family to speed progress for both children entering New York City foster care and those now awaiting placement in permanent homes. The campaign will be implemented by ACS and its contracted nonprofit foster care agencies and includes the following objectives:

• Ensure that as many children as possible who enter care will achieve permanency within one year through either safe return home or placement with a family willing to make a permanent commitment to them should they be available for adoption.
• Establish specific plans by July 1, 2010, for children currently in foster care to achieve permanency within one year, to be developed through family team conferences and recommendations to the Family Court.
• Ensure that no child age 18-21 leaves foster care without opportunities for stable housing, employment, medical coverage, a connection to a caring adult, and a support plan.
• Strengthen the foster care provider agency workforce. Together with the state and federal governments, ACS will work to enhance federal funding for training of agency staff, develop minimum requirements for training systemwide, develop new recruitment and retention programs, and begin joint planning to develop a new funding design to better support all foster care providers.

Children’s Rights will track the efforts of ACS, the foster care agencies, and the Family Court toward increasing the pace of all children’s progress toward placement in permanent families.

Children’s Rights is also working closely with other organizations to brief members and staff of the New York City Council and the New York State Legislature on the report and to advocate the implementation of its recommendations.